+-------------------------------------+ | Universe Documention | | Part 1C | +-------------------------------------+ +-------------------------------------+ | A T-Men & Wareforce Dox File | +-------------------------------------+ +-------------------------------------+ | Typed up by | | The Camel Jockey | +-------------------------------------+ +-------------------------------------+ | Special Thanx to | | Silicon Warrior | | & | | A.P.G | +-------------------------------------+ +-------------------------------------+ | Written for | | | +-------------------------------------+ +-------------------------------+ | Commerce in the Local Group | | & | | Using Menus | | & | |Soung Effects and Their Meaning| +-------------------------------+ +-----------------------------+ | Commerce in the Local Group | +-----------------------------+ In the Local Group, the basic currency is the credit. The credit is fixed by the Interworld Trade Commission as being equivalent in value to one unit of Ore IV. This frees the interstellar trader from the problesm of barter and exchange difficulties usually found between currencies. Since Ore IV is a common substance but tedios to refine, it provides a stable monetary base. One of your primary goals, as an interstellar merchant, is to earn money. The four major sources of revenue available to you are: mining, trade in products, passenger transport, and piracy. +--------+ | Mining | +--------+ Mining is a fairly straightforward way of earning or actually producing money. It requires at least one ore processor, a resource scanner, a resource program for your computer, and many crewman. In addition, depending how intent you are in your pursuit of ore, you may need a few assault capsules and their various operating paraphenalia. Once the ore has been mined and refined, you bring it to a starport money exchange where it is converted into credits. The disadvantages of mining are numerors. The success of a trip out to a mining world depends on how rich the deposits ore are. The process of mining ore is very dangerous and tedious. The worst disadvantage for the beginning merchant is the enormous start-up cost. The equipment required for a resonabley profitable mining expedition comes to well over 50,000 credits. +---------+ | Trading | +---------+ The object of trading is to buy an item on a world where it is commonplace and relatively inexpensive and bring it to a world with a slightly lower sophistcation and run the price up 250%. Multiply that by the 80 products you can carry at a time and you can see the amount of profit involved in a successful trip. A Starport will offer products only within the range of numbers that have the same ten digit as the port's sophistication. Example, if Grotto's starport has a sophistication of 76, it will offer products that range in sophistication from 70 to 79 (notice these all start with the same tens digit). The value of a product is based on its sophistication and its base price (a value you will never know exactly). If the product has a base price of 7000 and a sopistication of 73, on Grotto it would sell for approximately 6500 credits. Contrawise, if a product has a base price of 7000 and a sophistication of 79, it would sell for about 7500. Other merchants at a starport will buy products that are up to 9 sophistication points greater than the starport's sophistication of 85, merchants at the Grotto starport will buy it. The best method of trading is to buy products with a sophistication slightly less than the sophistication of the starport of the starport you are at. For example, merchants on Grotto are trying to get rid of a product with a sophistication of 73, because on Grotto it's not current technology. You buy that product for a reduced price and bring it to the Stowe starport (sophistication = 67) where it's suddenly the latest thing! Plan on making a 250% profit. You must take into account a planet's culture as well as its sophistication. On Rouvchorra (culture = 4 Formation f Aristocratic States), for example, many product types are illegal and will be confiscated if you try to bring them down to the starpost. Consult Appendix G to make sure none of the types of products you bring down to a planet are illegal. +---------------------+ | Passenger Transport | +---------------------+ Some planets in the Local Group have a surplus of people. Other planets are rapidly expanding and need all the manpower they can get. The object of passenger transport is to take people from a planet in the former category and take them to a planet in the latter. Planets offering emigrants will actually pay you to take people away. Planets that need people will pay you for immigrants. The problem is that many cultures do not accept transportees and all of them want people who are at least 1 and no more than 10 sophistication points greater that of the planet. Transport captains can expect over 1000 credits per passenger on a well-planned run. +--------+ | Piracy | +--------+ In orbit above many of the planets, complete anarchy is the rule. Properly armed, you can profit from this situation. To capture another spacecraft, however, is a long and dangerous process. You must carefully analyze your target and be able to outmaneuver it into a forced docking. Your troops must be stronger and better equipped than your target's to successfully capture it. Once captured, though, the ship's entire crew are your prisoners, all their credits and ore are yours, and all their cargo. But only if you live. +-------------+ | Using Menus | +-------------+ The Flight and Starport disks are "menu drive". This means that all sections are accessed by selecting the section from a menu (or list) of sections on the screen. When a menu is displayed on the screen, you will see a pointer that points to one of the sections on the menu. This pointer may be moved from section to section by pressing the option key. To run a section, you must first use the option key to move the pointer to that section. Pressing the select key will then run the section. To exit a menu and return tothe previous menu (if any), press the start key. This procedure is used for all menus in the game. +----------------------------------+ | Sound Effects and their Meanings | +----------------------------------+ There are several sound effects that are used throughout Universe. These are detailed as follows: +-------------------+ | Ship Under Attack | +-------------------+ If your ship is hit by an enemy weapon, you will hear a sound that resembles an explosion. When this {ound occurs, one of the parts abourd your ship may take some damage or be destroyed. Upon hearino this noise, you should either transfer to a different orbit (in an attempt to escape the attaacker) or fire back. +-----------------------+ | Ore Converters in Use | +-----------------------+ Whenever the ore converters run, you will hear a whirring sound. This sound will last from a few seconds to as long as a minute, depending on how much ore is being converted. A few short beeps will occur if you run out of ore during the conversion process.